Hey guys! I'm trying to build my understanding of fuel cells. My question is regarding the refinement of hydrogen. I know that to get enough hydrogen to use to operate a vehicle, you would need to turn it into liquid. How do you turn H2 into liquid?
any gases, including H2 could only be transformed into liquid by pressurizing butane gases which we are using as cooking gas are liquids inside the container and so of other gases that are available in containers
To operate the fuel cell, the hydrogen would need to be a gas. To carry it around, you would need one or more of very high pressure, a material that absorbs hydrogen (a lot of research being done on this right now), or converting to a liquid, as you suggest. To convert to a liquid, you have to spend a lot of energy refrigerating the hydrogen (boiling point around 20 K), and then need very good insulation to keep it cold, and to stop it from freezing up everything else around. Because the critical point of hydrogen is so low, pressure alone will not do to convert it into a liquid. For reasons such as these, I am extremely sceptical about the so-called hydrogen economy, quite apart from the fact that you need to use up more energy than you will ever get out to make the hydrogen in the first place.
